


Indomitable

by Megan (hrhprincessofalderaan)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Past Attempted Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 16:55:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5833324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrhprincessofalderaan/pseuds/Megan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite his impaired vision, Han can tell something is troubling Leia beneath her tough exterior after their escape from the Sarlaac pit. What happened to her in Jabba's Palace? Han fears he has himself to blame. Angst and fluff. Trigger warning for mild descriptions of sex trafficking and attempted sexual assault/rape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indomitable

Han’s eyesight was improving. He could vaguely make out shapes and colors, though everything was still blurred by a blinding white light. He was finally aboard the Falcon again, safe from Jabba, but when he stole a glance at Leia, he knew something was horribly wrong.

He couldn’t make out all of the details, but he could tell she was wearing some sort of metallic brassiere and a filmy skirt that did nothing to hide the shape of her legs. The Leia he knew was usually pretty conservative in her manner of dress; this was clearly not an outfit she had willingly donned. It occurred to him that she hadn’t said much since their escape from the Sarlaac pit. It was unlike her to be so quiet. This wasn’t the strong, resilient girl he had gotten to know in these last four years. What had happened to her in these past two days? He knew what Jabba was capable of, what he did with pretty young women. And this was his own fault, wasn’t it? Nothing would have happened to her if she hadn’t come to free him from the carbonite.

“You all right?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

She was silent for a few moments and he was afraid that she wasn’t going to answer. “No,” she said finally.

He wasn’t sure whether or not he should ask her about the outfit. Though he always suspected a hidden vulnerability lay beneath her tough exterior, she was very emotionally guarded and was prone to irritability when something was bothering her. Trying to coax her to open up could be like navigating a minefield, and he was hopeless at knowing the right things to say, especially to this girl he really liked, maybe even loved.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked finally.

“Shower,” she said, her voice still unusually clipped and resigned, “and a change of clothes.”

He nodded. He could use a shower himself, but something told him she needed it more.

“You can use the refresher in my cabin,” he told her. “And grab a shirt out of my closet for now. I’ll try to get you something else.”

He didn’t follow her. He didn’t think she would want him to.

“Chewie,” he called, slowly fumbling his way to the cockpit. “We need to make a stop in Mos Eisley.”

\----------

Leia scrubbed and scrubbed at her body, trying to cleanse herself everywhere Jabba the Hutt had touched her. She wiped angrily at her face, her chest, her stomach, her legs, her arms, everywhere, scrubbing herself until every inch of her skin was red and sore. She still felt his lingering touch. Alone in the safety of the shower, she finally allowed herself to cry, the salty tears stinging at her raw skin. She slid her back down the wall of the shower until she slumped onto the floor in a sobbing heap.

She reflected on all that had happened to her in the past two days. Though Han was free now, her plan to rescue him had backfired badly. She had been stripped of her clothing in front of an audience, exposing her body for all to see, and forced into that dreadful slave costume. She had been forced to dance before the crowd, a crude mockery of the traditional dances she had once performed in the court of Alderaan.

“Tell them who you are,” Jabba had ordered.

“I am Her Royal Highness Leia Organa, Princess of Alderaan,” she had stated, not allowing her voice to falter in front of these lechers. Those words usually filled her with pride, but this time their purpose was to humiliate.

“Long live the princess! Long live Alderaan!” they had jeered at her as she danced.

Then Jabba had forced her to answer a series of questions before the crowd. How old was she? “23.” Was she a virgin? “Yes.” Had she been touched by a man before? “No.” The crowd went wild with the knowledge that their entertainment for the night was a chaste, pure, virginal princess. What a novelty! There had been talks of an auction, the men in the audience wild with hunger to defile what they referred to as her “untouched beauty.” Never mind that she couldn’t stand the thought of any of them touching her. They couldn’t have cared less about that.

Jabba had forced her to sit by his side for the entire night, as if he were showing off his new toy. He had chained her to him by a collar around her neck, groped at her with his slimy hands, stroked her legs with his tail, tasted her skin with his slobbering tongue, and forced his disgusting lips upon hers. The smell of his putrid breath still burned in her memory. Needless to say, she had not gotten much sleep last night.

She had refused to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing her cry, of seeing her show any weakness. Leia Organa was anything but weak.

Luckily, Luke had shown up well before any virginity auction could actually take place. She had been brought to accompany Jabba to the Sarlaac pit, where she had finally wrapped her chains around his neck and pulled with all her might until she had strangled him to death. At least there was that one moment of her time in his company that she could be proud of.

The tears finally slowed. “Enough,” she scolded herself, forcing herself to stand up and get out of the shower. Leia was not one to wallow. She was strong and she would endure.

As she dried herself with her towel, she forced herself to look into the mirror. Her face looked a bit chafed and blotchy from all of the scrubbing and crying, but otherwise she looked like herself. The thought that she was not so changed, at least on the outside, comforted her.

She rang out her soaked hair and pulled on the shirt she had taken from Han’s closet. It wasn’t unusual for her to wear his shirts, not that he would know that. She’d made a habit of sleeping in them ever since leaving Bespin. The shirt smelled like him, made her think of how safe she used to feel in his arms. Safe. She was safe now, she reminded herself.

She glanced at the discarded metal bikini lying on the tiled floor and resolved to toss it into the incinerator at the earliest opportunity.

\----------

Han knocked on the door to his cabin.

“It’s me,” he said. “Can I come in?”

Leia opened the door and let him in silently, then sat down on his bed.

“Hey,” he said softly, “I had Chewie stop in Mos Eisley and I bought a dress and some shoes for you. I hope it fits. I had to guess your size and it’s kinda hard to read right now.”

“Thanks.” She took the folded garment from his arms and cradled it to her chest.

“I got white, see?” he continued. “That’s your favorite color, right? You’re always wearing white.”

He could vaguely make out the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. “Yes,” she answered quietly. “It is.”

“I’ll, uh… I’ll let you change,” he said, starting to leave.

“No, that’s all right. Stay with me.” Her voice was almost inaudible, but he took it as a good sign that she was requesting his company.

He watched her lift the collar of the oversized shirt she was wearing and bury her nose in it. Was it that she was comforted by his scent? Is that why she wanted him to stay?

“Can I, uh… May I put my arm around you?” he asked awkwardly as he sat next to her.

She nodded and rested her head on his shoulder. Her long, wet hair soaked through his shirt. He didn’t care. He slowly lowered his arm around her and stroked her shoulder gently.

“So Chewie’s flying us towards Endor,” he said, trying to make conversation. “I guess that’s where we’re meeting up with the other Rebels.”

She said nothing.

“I, uh, I thought about you a lot while I was in the carbonite,” he tried again. “Seems to me like it was just yesterday we were in Cloud City. I guess it’s actually been almost a year, huh?”

She still said nothing.

He was silent for a moment, not knowing what else to say.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he finally asked.

She shrugged. “You want to. What do you want to know?”

“Did he hurt you, Leia?” he asked cautiously.

She let out a humorless snort. “It depends what you mean by ‘hurt,’ I suppose.”

“Did he… touch you?”

“You want to know if he raped me,” she said coldly.

He opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it and said nothing. She stood and whirled around to face him.

“No. He did not ‘rape’ me,” she said, her voice as hard as steel. “That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it? That’s all you men care about, isn’t it, that the beautiful princess is ‘pure’ and ‘unsullied,” so you can be the one to defile her.”

Han panicked. “No, that’s not what I meant at all!”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“It’s none of my business how many men you have or haven’t been with. I just meant…I wanted to make sure you’re all right. That they didn’t do anything to violate you,” he stammered.

“They _did_ violate me. They violated me in nearly every way you can violate a person. One of them might as well have forced himself on me, too. There was talk of an auction.”

“Oh, Gods.” His voice broke. “Leia, I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”

He didn’t know what to do, what to say to make it go away. Why did he have to be so awful at knowing how to talk to the people he actually cared about?

It was hard to tell with his poor eyesight, but her rigid posture seemed to relax after hearing the uncharacteristic urgency of his tone.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a softer voice, coming back to sit with him. “I shouldn’t have been so accusatory. I’m not myself right now. I know you’re a good man, Han.”

A bark of laughter escaped his lips, the sound seeming hollow even to his own ears. _She_ was the one who was good.

“I’m not a good man just ‘cause I have the decency not to treat you like a…a plaything. And it’s ‘cause of me that this happened to you. If you hadn’t come for me… I’ll never forgive myself, Leia. You shouldn’t have come. You should’ve just left me.”

“Don’t talk like that.” She took his hand. “You would have done the same for me. You _have_ done the same for me, on the Death Star, and again when we escaped Hoth.”

“Huh.” He didn’t understand why she was suddenly the one giving _him_ assurance now. And it wasn’t the same thing. Sure, he’d helped come to her rescue a couple of times, but hadn’t there been less at stake?

“And if I hadn’t come for you, Jabba wouldn’t be dead.”

“You’re so brave,” he said sincerely, giving her hand a tight squeeze. “So brave.”

“Han, I know I’ve insulted you so much in the past, but…”

“Only ‘cause I provoked you,” he cut her off.

“I gave you your fair share of provocation, too. What I’m trying to say is that you _are_ a good man, Han. You play the mercenary well, but you would walk through hell itself for anyone you really cared about. You have much more integrity than I gave you credit for back then.”

He wasn’t sure what integrity she was talking about, but, damn, if he hadn’t been sure if he loved her before, he certainly was now. What had he ever done to deserve her high opinion of him?

“You seem tired,” he observed, evading her compliment. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

“I didn’t get much sleep last night, as you can probably imagine. And you should know… I thought about you a lot while you were in the carbonite, too.”

His heart did a strange but not at all unpleasant lurch in his chest. He stifled the urge to kiss her, knowing this wasn’t the time.

He moved over to give her space to lie down. “Do you wanna sleep now?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Want me to hold you?” he asked.

She nodded again.

He wrapped his arms around her and stayed with her until she drifted off to sleep, and in the morning when she emerged from his quarters, he was pleased to see a woman who looked more like the indomitable Leia he was accustomed to, looking beautiful in a long, white gown.


End file.
